UCLA School of Law Professor Goldberg Appointed by President Obama to Indian Law and Order Commission

January 18, 2011 – The White House announced today that Professor Carole Goldberg, Jonathan D. Varat Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law, has been appointed by President Obama to serve on the Indian Law and Order Commission. An expert on federal Indian law and tribal law, she will serve on the nine-member panel that was created by the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010. President Obama signed the act into law in July with the goal of improving public safety on Indian lands, including lowering the rates of domestic violence and sexual assault on reservations as well as lowering the rates of alcohol and drug abuse.

Professor Goldberg, who joined the UCLA Law faculty in 1972, teaches Civil Procedure, Federal Indian Law, Tribal Legal Systems, the Tribal Legal Development Clinic and the Tribal Appellate Court Clinic. She directs the Joint Degree Program in Law and American Indian Studies and is the faculty chair of the law school’s Native Nations Law and Policy Center. In 2006, she served as the Oneida Indian Nation Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, and in 2007 she was appointed a Justice of the Hualapai Court of Appeals.

Professor Goldberg has written widely on the subject of federal Indian law and tribal law, and is co-editor and co-author of Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law (1982 and 2005 editions), as well as co-author of a casebook, American Indian Law: Native Nations and the Federal System (4th ed., 2004, 5th ed., 2007 and 6th ed., 2010). Her most recent books include Defying the Odds: The Tule River Tribe's Struggle for Sovereignty in Three Centuries (Yale University Press, 2010), co-authored with USC anthropologist Gelya Frank, and Indian Law Stories (Foundation Press, 2010), co-authored with Kevin K. Washburn and Philip Frickey. She is currently co-principal investigator of a $1.5 million grant from the National Institute of Justice to study the administration of criminal justice in Indian country.

She has twice served as associate dean of UCLA School of Law, and has also served as chair of the UCLA Academic Senate. Professor Goldberg received a B.A. from Smith College and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.